Call center in Kemijärvi in the 1960s. Photo: Mauno Ylinampa.
Exhibition Talking North – Landline telephone in Lapland is open for visitors 19.9.2025–31.5.2026 in Arktikum Science Centre. The opening of the exhibition will be celebrated as part of the programme of an international seminar on telecommunications.
Over the past few decades, phones have moved from telephone desks to different rooms in the house and eventually to people's pockets. The miracle machine was first used in Lapland just six years after its invention, when an expedition brought the device to the municipality of Sodankylä in central part of Lapland.
Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson built a telephone device in 1876. In November of the same year, the Suomalainen Wirallinen Lehti newspaper wrote that sending words to the other side of the world with a telegraph is strange in itself, "but the biggest miracle of all miracles is the electric telegraph that talks".
The construction of an actual telephone network began later in the southern parts of Lapland. In the 1970s, Lapland still had homes without a telephone. Although advances in electronic communications reached Lapland with a delay, the region also served as a testing ground for new technologies. The landline era started to wane in the 1990s, when the focus gradually shifted from speaking on the phone to a more comprehensive transfer of digital data.
The exhibition shows how the need for the telephone was justified at different times and how northern conditions influenced the development of telecommunications.
The exhibition is part of the Telecommunications infrastructure, time, community, and the Arctic environment project funded by the Kone Foundation. The aim of the research project is to understand how the specific characteristics of the Arctic environment affect the telecommunications infrastructure and how the telecommunications infrastructure shapes the northern environment, communities and landscape.
Most of the photos displayed in the exhibition are from the photo collection campaign organised in the project.
Talking North – Landline telephone in Lapland
19.9.2025–31.5.2026
Arktikum Science Centre (Pohjoisranta 4, Rovaniemi)
Arktikum opening hours and ticket prices:
www.arktikum.fi
Workers laying cable under the Ounasjoki River in Sinettä in 1970, where ice had broken the cable. Photo: Kaarina Eskelinen.